This is a page from the Workplace Health and Safety Fatality Report for the death of Daniel Charest in July 2006. He died on a well site.Courtesy
/ Alberta Employement and Immigration

This is a page from the Workplace Health and Safety Fatality Report for the death of Derek Lutz in November of 2006. Lutz was killed when the tank he was working on exploded.Courtesy
/ Alberta Employement and Immigration

Andrea Lutz speaks in Lethbridge, Alberta, March 3, 2010, about her husband Derek Lutz, 26, who was a welder killed in an explosion on the Blood reserve. He wasn't told the tank he was working on was filled with natural gas.Stuart Gradon
/ Calgary Herald

Photo of Derek Lutz and his widow Andrea Lutz in a photo submitted by Andrea or series on workplace safety. He died November 8, 2006 when the oil tank he was welding exploded on the Blood reserve.Courtesy
/ Andrea Lutz

Photo of Derek Lutz submitted by his widow Andrea Lutz for series on workplace safety. He died November 8, 2006 when the oil tank he was welding exploded on the Blood reserve.Courtesy
/ Andrea Lutz

* Poor communication is a critical issue, particularly on sprawling construction sites with multiple employers. For instance, contractor Karl Malmquist drowned in 2005 after his snowcat broke through a patch of thin ice. Malmquist, who ran Caribou River Hunting Co., drove the machine into an area where nobody expected him to travel. An Edmonton court found ATCO Electric, the owner of the ice bridge where he was working, didn’t adequately assess the site for hazards.

* Workers from different companies often have different rules for getting the job done. In 2003, Harvey Ruth died after falling from scaffolding onto the concrete floor of a swimming pool construction site in northern Alberta. Six employers were on site, but provincial investigators said there was no system in place to make sure workplace safety laws were followed by all the companies.

* Large businesses often hire smaller ones to meet tight deadlines or handle specialized, and sometimes dangerous, chores. In the oilpatch, small- and mid-sized firms are employed to manage highly pressured natural gas wells in a process called snubbing. In 2004, Matthew Schwartz was killed when the snubbing rig he was working on near Sundre was engulfed in flames, triggering major changes in the sector.

However, contracting is an essential way that Alberta’s largest industries operate, particularly construction, and oil and gas.

With more than three decades of experience, he believes Alberta work sites overall aren’t as safe as other places — for reasons that have nothing to do with the industrial base.

“Some people attribute it to a cowboy mindset,” says Auger, Shell’s southern Alberta business operations manager. “It’s Canadian ingenuity, we want to get things done . . . sometimes we compromise ourselves.”

DANIEL’S DEATH

By mid-morning on July 31, 2006, Daniel Charest was working at the Primrose oilfield on the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range in northern Alberta, home to 30 deep wells and massive underground energy treasures.

The 45-year-old oilpatch veteran had been hired as a well site supervisor by Sure Flow Consulting Services, a Bonnyville firm. In turn, that business had been contracted by oilpatch giant Canadian Natural Resources, which owned the wells.

The companies were testing a new underground oilsands well, one that would eventually pump steam deep into the geological reservoir before the molasses-like petroleum was sucked back out.

After a routine test found one of the wellheads was loose, a pressure test was ordered, to be supervised by Daniel.

A crew of four employees from another energy company, Rockwell Servicing, was hired to pump nitrogen into the well. Canadian Natural Resources set a maximum pressure of 2.5 megapascals (MPA) for the test.

However, during conversations between the companies and Daniel, no one formally recorded the maximum allowable pressure, investigators later found.

On the inside of a cigarette pack, one worker gave a hint of problems to come: he scribbled down that the nitrogen flow rate should be 25 MPA — 10-times greater than what was actually ordered.

Just before 11 a.m., as the nitrogen pressure was building up, Daniel walked up to the well and ran his hand over the casing. At that moment, a powerful explosion erupted, tearing the well apart and sending a mixture of metal and mud into the air.

Debris was scattered up to 50 metres away.

Daniel “was struck by the surface casing and thrown approximately four metres from the well,” provincial investigators later wrote.

His hard hat was blown clear off his body, found near a metal section of the surface casing. Tire tracks in the mud ran red with blood.

At 11:21 a.m., efforts to resuscitate Daniel stopped.

The fatality report found instructions at the site had been verbally communicated from Canadian Natural Resources to Daniel, and then to the work crew, but weren’t recorded in formal documents.

“There was no system in place for ensuring and recording the accurate transfer of basic, essential and critical information, such as a maximum test pressure,” the report said.

As the pressure built, a failure of the well casing “was inevitable,” it concluded.

No safety charges were laid in Daniel’s death.

FIXING THE SYSTEM

Enform, the upstream oil and gas industry’s safety organization, knows there are problems with contracting.

In fact, it has developed new guidelines to improve the management of contractors, a long-standing call from some industry members.

“Doing it right the first time will hurt less people, it will wreck less equipment, and in the long run it will get work done faster and better,” said Rick Laursen, health and safety manager for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the industry’s main lobby group.

“The days of a handshake — and, quite honestly, sometimes a case of whisky upon (which) to do business — need to come to an end,” Laursen told hundreds of industry members at a safety forum in May.

Far too many times, a safety document “sits on a shelf and gathers dust. If we make that mistake with this one, we’ll be doomed to making the same mistakes we’ve made with contractors for a number of a years,” he said.

Construction is another industry that often operates through contractors, from carpenters and electricians to roofers who scale tall buildings.

He thinks the solution to contracting safety woes lies in introducing deterrents. His group is pushing the Stelmach government to adopt a system of issuing workplace safety tickets to both employees and employers, a common practice in Ontario.

But there’s also the reality that small companies are often hired to do the most complex tasks: working high above the ground on a towering condominium; moving a massive drilling rig; or welding in a confined area.

“It’s not work that we need every day, so they are hired on a specialized basis,” says Barry Kinnaird, safety manager at NAL Resources, a petroleum producer that has developed a safety program for hired hands.

“A contractor does a lot of our higher risk work.”

But companies for hire say the real key to safety at places buzzing with hundreds of employees is having clear lines of authority.

In fact, problems usually come down to mismanagement on the work site, says Bruce Jones, chief executive of Stoneham Drilling Trust, an oilfield services firm hired by petroleum producers.

“The major issue is well site leadership,” he says.

“There is an opportunity for miscommunication or lack of communication — but it’s not driven by multiple (contractors) on site.”

THE DEATH OF DEREK LUTZ

Three months after Daniel Charest’s death, another oilpatch subcontractor lost his life in southern Alberta.

Welder Derek Lutz was accustomed to risk, having spent eight years toiling in oilfield maintenance.

On Nov. 8, 2006, his one-man shop, Lutzy’s Welding, was hired for a job on a lonely stretch of prairie on the Blood reserve west of Lethbridge.

The 26-year-old Taber resident was often employed by bigger firms. On this job, the well lease was operated by Bonavista Petroleum, and at least two other companies worked on the site.

Early that morning, an inspector gave the all-clear for upgrading work on an oilfield storage tank recently purged of flammable gases.

After a morning of welding, Derek took a break.

While he was gone, an oil and gas separator on the site began overfilling with liquid from nearby wells. A contract operator directed two barrels of fuel into the storage tank.

Unaware the tank now held flammable liquid, Derek climbed a ladder on the side of the 750-barrel vessel. Firing up his torch, he started welding a support bracket to the tank.

Moments later, an explosion catapulted the tank’s roof high into the air, taking Derek with it.

The roof was blown 10 metres away. By the time emergency workers arrived, Derek showed no signs of life.

A provincial “safe work” checklist meant to identify hazards, particularly for contractors, didn’t note welding was to be done on the tank that day, government investigators later determined.

No one was charged.

“If everybody had been following the procedures and policies and rules that we had in place on that day, there would never have been an incident,” says Harold Gold, a safety adviser for Bonavista Petroleum.

Gold says the contract operator was aware flammable gases had flowed back into the tank, but didn’t give Derek any heads-up due to a “mental disconnect.”

Derek, he adds, also had an obligation to verify the tank was clear.

“People are people and, unfortunately, they make mistakes from time to time. And this was an unfortunate one,” Gold says.

For Derek’s widow, her husband’s death was more than just an unfortunate accident.

Andrea Lutz successfully took legal action against some of the players involved, a rare occurrence because most employees are covered by the Workers’ Compensation Board and prevented from suing employers.

Derek was not covered by the WCB, as he was self-employed.

“There are so many people who die at work and get injured at work, and people taking shortcuts,” she says.“You shouldn’t die at work.”

Four years after his death, Lutz still struggles without her mate. The couple planned to have children while expanding their business.

“Derek and I grew up together and we started dating when we were 14,” says Lutz, now 30.

“I don’t really have any hopes and dreams right now. I’m just trying to find out who I am without him.”

TALKING TRAGEDY

Back in Lac La Biche, Norman Charest regularly sits down with his seven employees in safety meetings.

He extols the virtues of working slowly when carrying out dangerous tasks and having clearly written work orders.

Charest says years ago he was part of the “old-fashioned” school of oilmen who didn’t put much emphasis on staying safe at work.

Now, after Daniel’s death, it’s a serious discussion at his company — a small firm so tight-knit the children of his employees call him grandpa.

Charest’s safety meetings often end on the topic of family: he talks about the mistake that killed his brother.

“When someone says a decimal point on a piece of paperwork, it doesn’t sound like much,” he says.

“That was a very small detail, but it turns out it was very large detail.”

KCRYDERMAN@THEHERALD.CANWEST.COM

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WHO'S THE BOSS: More than half of workplace deaths involve hired hands

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